Thursday, March 27, 2008

Logo #219: My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult

From TKK Central: "We started using that design in 1997, and it was designed together by both tattoo artist David Winland of Blue Buddha Tattoo - he used to crew for the band - and TKK singer Groovie Mann." Another easily propagated, faintly enigmatic sigil that can be quickly carved into desktops or flesh with one sharp implement or another. Their later output is rather beige and whelming but the "I See Good Spirits And I See Bad Spirits" album was always a marvel to me because they accomplished the whole thing so swiftly. EarlyThrillKillKult, despite its discofied trappings, seemed deeply steeped in sadness and desperation and where did it all go? It is not for nothing that "My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult" implies past lives. You tend to want to put it all behind you when you're through. Or laugh about it.

Another cult of thrills can be found in the 1975 pornographic film "Breakdown." So, in the interest of a wider appreciation of culture both popular and un-, we now present this breakdown of what happens in "Breakdown": "Here is a movie from the mid-1970s, when it seemed that maybe the only way blacks would become free in the U.S.A. would be to overthrow the U.S.A. We view the revolutionaries' headquarters. Posters of Chairman Mao & V. I. Lenin are on the walls. Two white girls have been drawn into their ranks. We see them alone in the HQ. Two white police officers gain entry to the place, and they begin interrogating the girls as to the whereabouts of the two main revolutionaries. The girls really do not know where they are. Our officers are unwilling to accept this answer. But as they have nothing for which they can arrest them, the girls are taken into separate rooms and summarily raped. One girl is forced to take it down her anus {is that WesMontgomery heard on the soundtrack?!}. The revolutionaries return. Surprise: They are black. The girls are still dazed and aghast. The black guys manage to learn the name of one of the police officers. One black guy knows how to get back at him. He goes over to the house of his white girlfriend, where he rapes her (the cinematography of the sex scenes involving the dark skinned black men and the white girls is luminous. I bet it's those uncredited Hollywood professionals again). Is that Toots and the Maytals now on the soundtrack?! A large squadron of police officers [stock footage] is marshaled outside the HQ. The two black revolutionaries manage to get through the congeries into it, but they are battered. We espy an issue of "The Workers' Advocate" headlining Zimbabwe. The girls attempt to make them feel better (both yield their anuses). How shall this end? I won't disclose. But I will say that whoever made this managed to cram a lot of stuff into only 59 minutes."